SoundCloud

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is the world’s largest open audio and music platform, with over 250 million songs from 30 million artists.

This concept project was to research and design a new feature for SoundCloud mobile app, that could result in an increase in member subscriptions and revenue.

My Contributions

Discovery and user interviews

Comparative analysis

Solution

User Persona, Problem Statement, HMWs, User Flows

Low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes

High-fidelity wireframes and prototypes

Usability testing and validation

Tools Used

Figma, Canva, Zoom, Slack

Team

We were an enterprising team of three designers - myself, Troy, and Siriphone. We collaborated on this project across the UX design principles.

Time

2 Weeks

The challenge

In today’s ever-changing and ever-growing music industry it is vital to keep discovering new artists for better quality content and for keeping users engaged. An example of this is when Billie Eilish was first recognized on SoundCloud for her song ‘Fingers Crossed’ which had gained immense popularity, brought to light Billie Eilish as an artist, and launched her career in the music industry.

Our challenge for this project was to add a feature that would enhance SoundCloud’s user experience, increase user engagement and member subscriptions. The way I set out to do this is by understanding the music industry, its competitors, comparative market, and user needs.

Empathize with User Research

Our first task at hand was to begin with user research to understand the latest trends in the music industry. One of the key findings was the emerging trend of exclusive video content across various competitive and comparative markets.

Competitive Analysis

We conducted feature analysis across SoundCloud’s leading competitors such as Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, and Youtube Music.

By far the majority of the leading competitors offered video and exclusive content. SoundCloud, at that time, was not offering this specific feature.

Our mission was to bridge this gap.

Comparative Analysis

As a part of defining this feature for SoundCloud, it was important to start with an understanding of industry leaders in video content. I identified Tiktok, Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch as leaders.

This comparative chart shows the importance of video content to both the users as well as the business models for this feature. The businesses have clearly put this feature at the forefront as the primary content. All the businesses have a way to monetize the video feature. And the last category of the table shows the importance of Live Videos as a feature used by all the companies

The Solution

Based on the competitive and comparative analysis I came up with the solution for SoundCloud to have the video feature as the next up and coming addition to their app to increase user engagement and subscriptions

Define

Based on the data collected from user interviews we created our User Persona and scenario for SoundCloud’s target audience

Problem Statement and How Might We's

Jordan needs exclusive music content so that they can follow and interact with their favorite artists as well as discover new artists

How might we make exclusive content discoverable to Jordan?

How might we help Jordan interact with their favorite artist?

How might we help them discover up-and-coming artists?

App Map

Following the established SoundCloud app architecture, our new video feature would continue to house all the genres and customizable libraries for the users. This app map shows the layout of our video home with sub-categories of streaming videos, video search, user’s video library, and exclusive GO+ video content.

User Flow

In order to increase memberships and revenue, it was important to create an effortless account creation and browsing process. Keeping this in mind our first task for the user was to set up an account that they can customize by selecting their favorite genres, artists and then completing the task by exploring the new video feature. At the end of the task, the user is prompted to start their free trial of GO+ in order to continue watching exclusive video content from the artists they curated during the account setup process.

For the second task, the user receives a notification on their phone to check out a live stream from one of their favorite artists, and engage by liking and adding comments to the live video stream.

Ideation

Each team member designed sketches for the wireframes and we converged at the final design by discussing and iterating on the critical elements needed.

Design Constraints

We followed consistency by keeping the Follow buttons, the horizontal scrolling, and the layout design the same as the SoundCloud app.

We kept our Play icon to be the same design as the existing play button and also added it to the navigation bar at the bottom keeping it consistent with the design

Style Guide

Prototype

Figma Link

Usability Testing

Testing Goal: Our goal was for users to be able to effortlessly create an account and watch exclusive content.

Metrics

Quantitative - Number of people that would upgrade to SoundCloud GO+
Qualitative - What did the users have to say about the app?

Usability test tasks:
Task 1 - Create an account with email and watch an exclusive, behind the scenes video.
Task 2 - Watch a live stream, like and comment on it.

Affinity Map

We created an affinity map with all the data collected and converged on some of the critical points that needed iteration right away.

“I really like the tour explanation of the video feature, it makes it very easy to follow.”

Iteration process

From our initial walk-through and usability testing of the app, our team discussed the feedback and converged on the following changes:

We found that it was difficult for some users to read the email and password fields because of very low contrast. So we redesigned the buttons and form fields to make them more accessible with a higher contrast while still maintaining SoundCloud’s design style.

SoundCloud requires a user’s age and gender to sign up and does not offer an explanation as to why it is required. We redesigned the signup process to include an overlay with a tooltip justifying the need for age data collection. We also recommended that SoundCloud should make gender an optional field.

During the genre and artist curation part of account setup, some users found it helpful to have a detailed message overlay explaining how to successfully complete the process.

To increase discoverability, we added the new video feature button at the end of the navigation and highlighted the feature in the onboarding process. Based on our test data, this was an optimal placement to find the new video feature.

In addition, some users wanted help understanding the video feature better, so we created an onboarding tour to help with it.

Iterations (Round 2)

After we implemented the changes from the first usability testing results, we then headed into round two. Based on results from the data, our next design iterations would include these changes:

From Task 1

Remove the Play button icon from the artist’s profile images and place it next to Watch Now.

Allow users to opt-out anytime during the onboarding tour on the videos page.

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Reduce the number of pop-ups.
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From Task 2

Have an option for the user to expand videos to full screen on their devices.

Collapse comments after the users are done entering their comments.

Give an option to the user to hide the Heart and Add Comment section while watching video content.

Outcomes

The results from our latest round of user feedback show a significant uplift in the number of users opting for SoundCloud subscriptions to be able to access our exclusive video content feature. Our Round 2 usability tests indicate that 83.3% of users would subscribe to the SoundCloud GO+ subscription. These results helped validate our initial hypothesis around the importance of video content for SoundCloud, while continual design iteration based on user feedback has helped us create an engaging and delightful experience for our users.

Round 1

Data collected from six participants indicated that 50% of users would subscribe to the new videos exclusive feature on SoundCloud
Round 2

Data collected from six participants indicated that 83.3% of users would subscribe to the new videos exclusive feature on SoundCloud

Next Steps

We’d like to conduct in-depth user interviews to further understand the following:

User interactions and behaviors between music and video contents
What drives and motivates users to sign up for paid subscriptions
Implement Google Analytics to measure the business impact of the new video feature